ing and singing in lamentable tune, when they began to enter
into the middest of the round circuit, being followed of others which
answered them again. After that they had sung, danced, and turned 3 times,
they fel on running like vnbridled horses, through the middest of the
thickest woods. And then the Indian women continued all the rest of the
day in teares as sad and woful as was possible: and in such rage they cut
the armes of the yong girles, which they lanced so cruelly with sharpe
shels of Muskles that the blood followed which they flang into the ayre,
crying out three times, He Toya. The king Audusta had gathered all our men
into his house, while the feast was celebrated, and was exceedingly
offended when he saw them laugh. This he did, because the Indians are very
angry when they are seene in their ceremonies. Notwithstanding one of our
men made such shift that by subtile meanes he gatte out of the house of
Audusta, and secretly went and hid himselfe behinde a very thicke bush,
where at his pleasure, he might easily discry the ceremonies of the feast.
They three that began the feast are named Iawas: and they are as it were
three Priestes of the Indian law: to whom they giue credite and beliefe
partly because that by kinred they are ordained to be ouer their
Sacrifices, and partly also because they be so subtile magicians that
anything that is lost is straightway recouered by their meanes. Againe
they are not onely reuerenced for these things, but also because they
heale diseases by I wotte not what kinde of knowledge and skill they haue.
Those that ran so through the woodes returned in two dayes after: after
their returne they began to dance with a cherefull courage in the middest
of the faire place, and to cheere vp their good olde Indian fathers, which
either by reason of their too great age or by reason of their naturall
indisposition and feeblenesse were not called to the feast. When all these
dances were ended, they fell on eating with such a greedinesse, that they
seemed rather to deuoure their meate then to eate it, for they had neither
eaten nor drunke the day of the feast, nor the two dayes following. Our
men were not forgotten at this good cheere, for the Indians sent for them
all thither, shewing themselues very glad of their presence. While they
remained certain time with the Indians, a man of ours got a yong boy for
certaine trifles, and inquired of him, what the Indians did in the wood
during their a